I was chatting with my TUAW colleagues this morning about Mac versus iPhone programming. And as per usual with these conversations, we veered in the direction of unfettered speculation. It's an occupational hazard.

As someone who regularly develops on both platforms, I declared that the iPhone represents the future of Mac programming. The iPhone, I posited stated, offers a great new platform without the need to be fully backwards compatible like the Mac. Our own Victor Agreda challenged me to back up that position. After a bit of time and thought, I decided to do so in this post.

My key point is this: Apple's engineers have learned a lot of important design lessons during the history of OS X. When the iPhone debuted, it gave those engineers the chance to rebuild an OS and an API from the ground up. Those engineers could craft a platform and its libraries that built on the Mac's successes without dragging along its less fortunate design decisions. Yes, there were some lemon frameworks that initially made the grade, but over time, Apple has reduced their number.

Even now, Apple continues its iPhone design process, adding new frameworks and APIs at a prodigious rate. The iPhone OS remains a work in progress, developing in ways and directions that the initial release two years ago could not have anticipated. And Apple does this, knowing fully that the closed platform allows them a great deal of design freedom that would not have been possible on the open Macintosh.

In contrast, consider in how many ways the Mac's successful history drags the platform down. A commitment to existing APIs and historical design practices show up in nearly every Mac development project. The simple elegance of the iPhone's built-from-the-start-as-Objective-C 2.0-based API is largely missing from Cocoa libraries.

Whether you're working with buttons, menus or simple text views, the iPhone development approach simply works better: beautiful 2.0-style properties, consistent API design, better-thought-out object inheritance trees, and so forth. With the iPhone, you see a great new platform evolving without the need to be fully backwards compatible

Snow Leopard, with its minimal API changes has bought the Macintosh a few years of stability. But I think it's time for Apple to rethink the platform as a whole, re-imagining its API through the lens of current iPhone OS development. While Snow Leopard offers Apple the room to stay still for now, I can see Apple moving forward in a separate engineering effort to Cocoa Touch Mac, a hypothetical cross-platform OS that supports general development on iPhone and future Mac devices like my imaginary snow-princess-rainbow-pony-iTablet.

The ghost of NeXT-past, as TUAW-colleague Joachim Bean puts it, still haunts us. It's time to exorcise the unhelpful bits of that pervasive spirit and usher in the new age of the iPhone and its API design examples. Mac OS X is, and has been, a superb development platform. What I'm suggesting is that iPhone OS might just be a better one.

Last week the topic of the iTablet ranged into dream territory as we TUAWians discussed this speculative post over at Technologizer. Although some team members expressed reservations about the iTablet and its possible limitations, others of us let our hopes range free. With apologies to Robert Browning, at least I think it is Robert Browning, if our dreams do not exceed Apple's grasp, then what is the imagination for? So keeping that expansive philosophy in mind, here are the TUAW wishlists for the possibly probably upcoming tablet.

Erica Sadun:

While I'm still hoping for a dockable, one that works as a Snow Leopard desktop when docked and runs iPhone OS on the go, I'm not holding my breath either. Today's MacBook storage and battery options prove that with a dockable tablet, I could bring my entire world with me and use that world for reasonable periods of time -- but it would take a significant engineering effort to merge iPhone's ubiquitous touch screen technology with standard Mac OS X interaction models.

So, will the tablet really run Snow Leopard? Er, probably not. But could you imagine a MacBook shell, where you could slide the tablet into a frame where the screen normally sits? That would be freaking awesome.

Even as an iPhone-OS-only solution, an iTablet would provide wealth of on-the go applications through App Store. Assuming no great leaps forward beyond what we're already seeing in the iPhone OS 3.x SDK, an iTablet would be ready to provide existing iPhone capabilities with a beautiful big screen to work with.

If I had to pick two features that I'd want to see added, though, they would be wireless support for external keyboards and ubiquitous TV-out. Although the on-screen keyboard is fine for tip-tapping data into fields, there will be times that a tablet user might want to unfold a portable Bluetooth keyboard and use that for data entry.

TV-out support is currently limited to movie playback. Extending that to general application output would help position an iTablet better into the business presentation world. It would also be nice if an Apple Remote of some kind could be used with an iTablet.

Even without these features, an iTablet limited to the current iPhone OS will be a major technology leap forward just due to the increased screen real estate. I can't wait to start playing with big-screen iPhone applications!

Good news from our friends over at Joystiq -- they had the good fortune to speak with the folks over at LucasArts (who are currently working on reviving some of their old point-and-click library of games: Secret of Monkey Island is coming back to the Xbox Live Arcade, and other games, including the classic Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, are due to make their way to the PC's Steam service), and the subject of the iPhone came up. While we didn't get any really great news (like, say, a release date), we did get a vague answer in the affirmative: "On iPhone, you know Apple's policy that we can't talk about a release until it's ready to release. But it would make sense that we would do something like that if we were to go in that direction ... wink wink, nod, nod."

With a wink and a nod, it seems like a fairly safe bet that we can expect at least one or two iPhone ports of these old LucasArts titles in the future. The whole point-and-click genre (you can play a great little sample done by gaming genius Tim Schafer right over on his company's website) is experiencing a resurgence, and LucasArts is showing a lot of sudden loyalty to fan favorites like Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, and Grim Fandango, so there's never been a better time to send a port or two over towards the App Store.

I think the whole "Apple buying Twitter" rumor floating around is about as much of a crock as the "Apple buying EA" one. But I give slightly more credence to this conclusion: that, despite the painful experience of Pippin, Apple is once again putting together a game console. Why? Let the evidence from BNET convince you.

First, Apple is picking up game execs and console chip makers left and right. Second is a whole slew of recent patents, for everything from mixing up media and game environments to management of games acquired from a media server. And third, though BNET doesn't actually connect the dots and say it, we will: Apple is sitting on what might be the best library of independent games anywhere, and it's sitting right in front of us in iTunes' App Store.

For years, console makers have depended on the mercy of publishers to keep their hardware going -- they sell the hardware at a loss, and then rely on the software sales and licensing to make it all back up again. But think of what Apple could do here: improve the AppleTV or Mac Mini, throw in some kind of Wii-like interface, and then break the whole thing open in the same way they did with the App Store: let developers in with a really low cost of entry, give them the tools they need to create solid games, and just take a nice cut from all of the tiny transactions flowing back and forth.

BNET claims that the iPhone's interface wouldn't work on a larger console, but why not? All Apple has to do is figure out a way to translate the iPhone's gestures and taps into a console system, and then they can practically run the games natively. Sure, the resolution would be a little low with a straight port, but that's a small problem to fix. Apple already has the makings of a game console with the iPod touch, and while the rumors may still just be rumors, there's never been a better time for them to leverage what they've already got.

Reader Josh sent along this little note -- nothing too important, just something for you to file away for future reference. He just wanted us to point out that way, way down in the stats for Adium, the IM client for everyone who's not using iChat, there is one surreptitious listing for a "MacBookMini."

Now, I assure you, we're thinking the exact same things you're thinking: these stats are totally bunk, anyone can edit their computer ID to be listed as anything they want, and one stat on Adium's page does not mean that Apple is coming out with some sort of revolutionary miniature laptop. And we agree with you -- it's almost certainly nothing of consequence. Or, that is, we would completely agree with you, except for one thing: it's happened exactly this way before. A little computer called the MacBook Air first showed up in Adium's stats, and people argued those exact same things at the time, and it all turned out to be real.

You might say that makes it doubly likely for someone to tweak their computer's settings to show up as some legendary Apple test machine, and again, we'd agree with you. But it's a big world out there -- unless you work at 1 Infinite Loop, you have no idea what Apple is testing and working on right now. Like I said, we just thought we'd let you know. Just in case.

Gizmodo is citing two major European retailers, who have said they are not expecting any more Mac mini shipments from Apple. This could mean one of two things: either a new model is soon to be announced, or the line will be discontinued as early as today's Q4 conference call.

Many people love their Mac minis, turning them into everything from low-cost web servers to roll-your-own DVRs. It was originally intended for switchers who didn't want or need to replace their screen, keyboard or mouse, but wanted the Mac experience.

On Amazon.com, the MacBook continues to be Apple's best-selling computer, followed by the 15-inch MacBook Pro. The Mac mini comes in third, ahead of the 24-inch iMac.

As someone with a family member interested in a Mac mini, this doesn't bode well. What do you think this means? Will Apple have another ultra-low-cost Mac waiting in the wings? Leave us a comment with your predictions.

Apple posted record earnings yesterday, yet the stock still dropped amid concerns over Steve Jobs' health (I'll refrain from speculating because I find it tasteless and it's none of my business) and lower projected gross margins for the September quarter (Q4). Although Apple is famous for under-promising/over-delivering, especially when it comes to projected sales and gross margin performance, during yesterday's call, CFO Peter Oppenheimer offered up a very interesting explanation for Apple's lower estimates: new products!

Although Apple historically has a lower gross margins in the September quarter because of the Back-to-School promotion, Apple also added that a "new product that [it] [couldn't] discuss" would also result in lower gross-margins. Throughout the call, Oppenheimer kept throwing out phrases like "product transition," "new additions to the product line" and a little mantra that went something like, "Apple makes state of the art new products that the competition just can't match. When we do that earlier in an introduction, costs are higher."

We had a good time speculating what new products/changes to the product line will appear in September (or in the 4th quarter, more accurately) in the liveblog and the press has joined in that speculation today. ZDNet thinks that products will be brought out at lower prices, so that Apple can drive volume and gain marketshare. Over at eWeek, they are guessing everything from a shift in microprocessors, to low-cost portables aimed at schools to revamped AppleTVs.

The general thought (or wish) in our chat last night centered around new MacBook Pros, lower priced Airs and revamped Minis or other headless Macs.

My personal speculation is that while I expect current line products to drop in price a bit (not a huge drop, but a drop), and think it is high time for a MacBook Pro redesign, I'm going to guess that new displays are part of the "transition." The Apple Cinema Display line is not only overpriced, it is long-in-the-tooth when compared to products in its pricepoint (or even lower pricepoints). OLED displays could be expensive, and it would certainly be technology that no one else is pushing.

For me, the key to Oppenheimer's words wasn't just the talk of lower gross margins -- because that doesn't necessarily mean lower prices -- it was all the talk of "state of the art products that the competition just can't match." That signifies something that the competition (presumably, HP and Dell) isn't already selling a product or technology that Apple is looking at introducing. With the number of patents Apple has, there is plenty of room for speculation.

What are your best (or most outrageous) guesses? Leave them in the comments and we'll all see how wrong (or right) we are in September.

So I was chatting with Cory and we started talking about what the iPhone will or will not bring. Will it ship on Thursday or not? Will Apple charge for it? Here's a round-up of our outstanding SDK concerns:

Will it ship? Rumors seem to be split between a no-show and a preliminary alpha or beta release. The fact that Apple has promised a "roadmap" rather than a "roll-out" indicates that things aren't as settled for shipping as we might hope.

How much will it cost? Is this going to be freely available like XCode or are we looking at a paid ADC-only release, like the early Leopard seeds? I wouldn't be surprised by ADC-only but I certainly am hoping for a wider release. The iPhone is a perfect hobbyists platform and limiting development to "enterprise" would be a sad move.

What shape will it take? It looks like a given at this point (just watch me be wrong!) that we're going to see an Objective-C 2.0-based XCode development environment with access to "blessed" frameworks and headers. There will likely be a simulator and a way to transfer by cable to the iPhone for testing.

What limits are there going to be? Will devs get access to the cell radio? Or does Apple intend to limit development to Internet-only? The smart money is riding on the latter option. I don't see the jailbreak community, with its full suite of iPhone applications and services going away any time soon--especially if Apple limits access to core iPhone features. That being said, I'm pretty sure that Apple will not interfere with any standard networking calls. So you should be able to use the WiFi and EDGE connections and services like Bonjour to interact with other computers on your LAN.

How will iTunes delivery work? My guess is that certain approved providers (like TuneCore for music) will be able to access store distribution for a fee, possibly a very large fee. I do not think that Apple will be involved in vetting individual software items. I also think that the legal agreements before you can distribute will be extremely complex, particularly when it comes to things like warranties and liability. I'd be stunned if this delivery system was in place any earlier than WWDC -- and possibly later.

What about that whole "enterprise" iPhone thing? It may just be more Exchange-type integration. Hard to say. Layton Duncan thought that it might mean the event might touch on non-iPhone news, with the recent dropping of the Xserve RAID line.

So that's a roundup of things we discussed. What are your takes on these issues? And what issues did Cory & I miss? Let us know in the comments.

Time is running out for Toshiba and friends; the high definition format wars are almost over now officially over. HD DVD hasn't found the footing it needed to earn the support of retailers and studios alike, and it seems that Sony's champion, Blu-Ray, is going to win the day.

So what does that mean for Apple users? Several years ago, Apple latched onto Blu-Ray as a format, but aside from an MCE Blu-Ray drive, we still haven't seen HD media used in any of Apple's products. There have been plenty of rumors (aren't there always?), but whether it's because they want to sell HD content in iTunes or for some other reason, a Blu-Ray drive to replace the SuperDrive hasn't happened yet.

Which leaves us wondering: now that we've seemingly got a winner, will Apple step up with the Blu gear? Of course, the MacBook Air doesn't even have a drive, and we're sure Apple would love to have content distributed only through iTunes and Apple TV. But surely consumers still have a need for physical media -- will Apple now take advantage of its early-advocacy position on Blu-Ray and update the hardware?

Are we going to see new Cinema displays by the end of the month? If so, they might look like this-- it's a nice-looking mockup posted by Ben over on the redrant forums. It is interesting that Cinema displays are almost starting to match up to the Beatles as the one thing we hope to get from Apple but never do. For years now, people have been hoping for an update to these things-- an installed iSight (that one's actually been "a lock" for years) and even a touchscreen display. But Apple hasn't budged-- the last time they updated the Cinemas, it was to drop the prices two years ago.

Yup, it's been since then that a Cinema update has seemed to be just around the corner. You can only think of so many ways to update monitors, but it seems that Apple hasn't, so far, liked any of the ideas enough to put them on sale.

Thanks, Jacob!

If you're using version 1.1.3 of the iPhone or iPod touch-with-January-Upgrade , you'll probably encountered Web Clips. Web Clips add home screen icons that lead to your favorite sites. It's easy enough to make Web Clips, just tap the "+" button at the bottom of any MobileSafari webpage and choose Add to Home Screen from the pop-up menu (and yes, we're working on one for TUAW).

Battlefield 2142 is already on the Apple Store, along with all the other games EA has released on the Mac, but we haven't heard anything official about Battlefield 3 yet, for any platform. That's why DigitalBattles was so surprised to find a list of Battlefield 3 features in a document meant for investors. And the most interesting "feature" on the list was this: "Windows Vista and OS X." That's right, if the leaked document is true, it appears EA wants to release Battlefield 3 simultaneously on OS X and Vista. And not on XP. That's what I'm talking about!

Of course, EA wasn't real happy with all the speculation, but they didn't actually deny anything. And as DB points out, the investor document didn't say that XP wouldn't be supported, it only specified Vista and OS X.

But still, if you told me earlier this year that Battlefield 3 would be released on OS X and not XP, I would have laughed in your face. If EA really is planning to bring out a top tier, anticipated title like this simultaneously on OS X, they might be able to redeem themselves to Mac gamers yet. Sure, I'm still angry at them for buying out BioWare, but brand new games on the Mac is good for everyone.

[via IMG]

Does anyone else think it's a little crazy that we're already 1/4 of the way through October and we still don't have an official release date for Leopard? It'll almost assuredly be at the very end of the month, but in terms of date and time, no one has an official clue.

For a Piper Jaffray analyst, however, all signs point to October 26th (and gwhiz adds 6 p.m. on that Friday afternoon just like the iPhone launch). Makes a lot of sense to me-- Friday is clearly a great day to launch a product, as it gives Apple the weekend to claim sales figures, as well as gives us consumers a chance to break open the box and get it installed right away. Analyst Gene Munster says, also, that it's the end of the first month of a fiscal quarter, which Apple likes for boosting sales-- Tiger released in the same situation.

Plus, you know, the 25th is a full moon, so there's even more fuel for the speculatory fire. I agree that the 26th sounds pretty convincing, but of course we won't know for sure until Steve wants us to.

Thanks, Zoli!

Perhaps the most interesting and mysterious two words heard yesterday during Apple's big conference call were "product transition." The biggest surprise of the call was that Apple was setting its profit guidance much lower than expected, and the two big causes they gave for doing that were "higher commodity costs" (because they believe they got a good deal on iPhone components this quarter) and these mysterious "product transitions." So what's the deal there?

Almost unanimously, the analysts are predicting a product shakeup, specifically in the iPod family. Ars says multitouch is coming, Forbes suggests that Apple tipped its hand to upcoming product changes, and Apple Insider has Ben Reitzes, who was the first analyst to question the low guidance, suggesting that an iMac redesign or "ultra-portable" may be in the works.

But the majority of analysts say it's the iPod that Apple will focus on. The iPod has been waiting in the wings, watching the iPhone and OS X get all kinds of pretty updates, and call it what you want-- the halo effect or trickle down-- the iPod is ready for a refresh. ThinkSecret comes right out and says it: we'll see a 6G iPod as early as the first half of August.

Whatever this "product transition" might be, odds are we'll hear about it sooner than later. Apple's execs made it clear that by the time they did another call in October, everything would be made much clearer.

Ryan from Cybernet (thanks!) dropped a note about his find of a new Apple patent. These things spring up faster than mushrooms (or rabbits, depending on your preference for down home expressions), but sometimes they are a good indication of what Apple is at least considering producing in the future.

This one's all about the iPod, by the looks of it, and giving it the ability to "wirelessly control and access a media server." Ryan speculates that means iTunes, which would mean that you could listen to streaming music from your iTunes install, through your iPod. But I think he's thinking small on this one-- what if Apple wanted to create an iPod that actually hooked up to AppleTV. You could sit in your bedroom watching the latest Daily Show, streaming from the AppleTV in the other room, while someone else watched the latest episode of Lost on the television. The possibilities there are very interesting-- combine a widescreen iPod with a wireless function like this (and we might as well throw in MobileSafari, right?), and you're looking at a very droolworthy multimedia gadget.

Of course, as with all Apple patents, this is total and complete speculation-- this patent may never actually be built, and even if it is, we might be looking at something planned years from now. But it's always fun to guess at what Apple's doing next.